Acting Aestheticism, Performing Decadence: The Cinematic Fusion of Art and Life

Abstract

In 1917, the futurist artist Anton Giulio Bragaglia released what is today the only extant work of futurist cinema, a silent film called Thaïs, starring a Russian performer, Thaïs Galitsky. The overlap of performer and performance extends beyond the fact that the film shared her name: the Russian dancer portrays Vera Preobrajenska, a decadent aristocrat from Eastern Europe. Vera lives in a bizarre house constructed out of abstract geometrical shapes, equipped with secret rooms that include a gas chamber. This set, designed by Enrico Prampolini, is the most overtly futurist element of the film, as the plot consists of a typical love triangle leading to ruin: Vera seduces the lover of her friend Bianca (a countess), resulting in Bianca’s accidental death, which in turn drives Vera to commit suicide by locking herself in the secret gas chamber of her labyrinthine house. Her motivation for betraying Bianca is an aristocratic desire to experiment with the lives of others – an amoral aestheticism that explains her nickname in the film, ‘Nitchevo’, an obvious allusion to Nietzsche that signals a futurist intertext as well as a paradigm for her coldhearted game with life and death. Her liberated sexuality and amorality shape a tragic story where ultimately Vera is trapped in her own game (in the plot) and in the bizarre architecture of her own house (on the set). This dramatic death merges her with the romantic story she has crafted as well as with the artistic setting of her aesthetic existence.